The reasoning presented in 1918 contained a number of errors concerning timeframes. The timeframes proved to be longer than was assumed at that time. This is not surprising. But the basic
* See Works, 5th ed., vol. 36, pp. 295-307. Editor.
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elements of our economy remained the same. The peasant "poor" (proletarians and semi-proletarians) transformed, in a very large number of cases, into middle peasants. Because of this, the petty-proprietorial, petty-bourgeois "elemental force" strengthened. And the civil war of 1918-1920 extraordinarily intensified the devastation of the country, retarded the restoration of its productive forces, and drained above all the proletariat itself. To this was added the crop failure of 1920, fodder shortage, livestock mortality, which further delayed the restoration of transport and industry, affecting, for example, the delivery of firewood by peasant horses—our principal fuel.

As a result, the political situation by spring 1921 had developed such that immediate, the most decisive, the most emergency measures for improving the condition of the peasantry and raising its productive forces became urgently necessary.

Why precisely the peasantry, and not the workers?

Because to improve the condition of the workers, we need grain and fuel. Now the "bottleneck"—from the standpoint of the entire state economy—is greatest precisely because of this. And we cannot increase the production and collection of grain, the procurement and delivery of fuel in any other way than by improving the condition of the peasantry, raising its productive forces. We must begin with the peasantry. Whoever does not understand this, whoever is inclined to see in this placing of peasants in first place an "abdication" or something similar to an abdication of the dictatorship of the proletariat, simply does not think the matter through, surrenders himself to the power of phrases. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the direction of policy on the part of the proletariat. The proletariat, as the directing, as the ruling class, must be able to direct policy so as to solve first and foremost the most urgent, the most "acute" task. The most urgent now are measures capable of raising the productive forces of the peasant economy immediately. Only through this can we achieve both an improvement in the condition of the workers and the strengthening of the alliance of workers with the peasantry, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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